The best (but LATE) sight of the morning

So don't you think that, with all the advanced tech, we could at least have COFFEE during the 12-hr fast before routine bloodwork (okay, and the pee-in-a-cup test)? I mean, can't the machines account for the caffeine that I need just to get the blood moving?

Finally!

If only this were required reading.

What I'm up to these days, part II ...

... oh yeah, and yesterday, the main sewer line backed up into my tub.

The only cool part of this event (really, it was cool) is that the plumbers had this camera they sent down into the pipes so they could see the roots. Really, it was like watching a colonoscopy on House. Sort of.

What I'm up to these days...

(an illustration of my latest emails)

Dear Mayor Riddell:

I'm attaching the following complaint (which I've sent to the Better Business Bureau, the Yucaipa Chamber of Commerce, and the police department) to provide background information to this issue. What I am writing you for, specifically, is to complain about a frivolous 9-1-1 call.

Basically, what happened is that in the course of a dispute over a transaction at a local business (a pet grooming place), the groomer called 9-1-1 in order to intimidate me. This incident happened sometime between 1 and 2 p.m. at Pampered Pet Boutique, located at 33527 Yucaipa Boulevard #C4, Yucaipa, CA 92399. If anyone listens to the tape, you'll hear her saying "oh, it's not an emergency," and then staying on the emergency line for another minute before saying "never mind, they're leaving."

When I was demanding a partial refund (or even an explanation) of a fee--a demand that was *not* threatening, or assaultive, or even particularly combative--the staff at the business below talked louder and louder, moved closer to me in an effort to physically intimidate me, wouldn't listen to me, and THEN said that my demand was "harassment" and dialed 9-1-1. The call was made by Stephanie (I think that's her name), the groomer at that business, and it lasted for a couple of minutes. I would like someone to inform Stephanie that she shouldn't tie up police resources in order to threaten her customers.

While the actual business dispute shouldn't concern you (I'm cancelling the charge and letting my credit card company deal with Pampered Pet Boutique), I'm very concerned, as a San Bernardino County resident, that *anybody* in a local business makes a frivolous call to 9-1-1 and ties up that resource (even for a *minute*) in order to threaten a dissatisfied customer. If such a false call to 9-1-1 is against the law, as I believe it is, then I'm sure that I (and a witness) would be willing to formally complain.

The Rockefeller Center Zamboni

A rare sighting of this lovely creature in its native habitat.

The view in Atlanta. On my way home from CCCC, I'm noticing how tired I am. Good conference--although, as usual, the best stuff happens somewhere other than official sessions. Travel tragedy: I left my favorite hat somewhere (prolly O'Lunney's Pub) and lost my favorite leather gloves.

Free internet access--like socialized health care, a fabulous thing if you don't mind waiting in line. Note to self--writing teachers are computer hogs.

Cyborgy

Breakfast in New York. I'm testing out mobile blogging--yep, dear reader, this post is from my cellphone.

I don't know why, but it's worth watching.

Hey, it's finals week. I must rely on others' creativity.

Just in time for CCCC

And you?

My Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

15% Upper Midwestern

10% Midwestern

5% Dixie

5% Yankee

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Wait, you mean I had to come back?

New York was great. Good food, lots of people wearing black, and snow. I did manage to finish my paper (it had to do with immersive technology, representation, and post-cyborg ironies...trust me), and so earned my scholarly keep. The LAW and I strolled around her old stomping grounds (NYU) and almost crashed an Official Event, but I nixed it once I saw the Ukrainian folk dancers in native costume. I just couldn't do it.

One highlight was the Museum of Modern Art--more specifically, Van Gogh's Starry Night, which I managed to see in its lovely thick-paintiness just before MOMA closed and they kicked us out. I didn't realize it was there, and had wasted entirely too much time downstairs looking at idiocies like Martin Creed's "The Lights Going On and Off." Yeah, right. My next piece, for which I hope MOMA forks over tens of thousands of dollars, will be, hmmmm, "Sometimes You Step in Sticky Things," quickly followed by "The Room Smells Bad," or my signature piece "The Lights Go Off and You Get Hit With Pillows for No Reason," all of which would add to Creed's postmodern protest against "things" and "consumerism" and also explore "the qualities of 'nothing.'" What a crock of s***. Oh wait, that's my next piece.

Start spreadin' the news....

That's right, New York/New York. I'm presenting a paper that I'm still in the process of writing.

So I took a job compatability test and found out that I'd be great in a job involving things rather than people. But what if I just think of people as things? Does that count?

Seriously, though, raspberry farming and writing comic books up in the wild northwest looks pretty good. I'm not sure that I can convince the LAW (who'd have to bankroll the endeavor) of the value of this new life.

I'm here.

Where are we going, and what are we doing in this handbasket?

Snow in Redlands, California? Mais oui! Things are funky with the weather, so much so that the U.S. government might even start snapping their fingers and believing in Global Warming (see "Better late than never"). One wonders, really, if "late" or "never" really counts, but of course, one is cynical. In related news, the Brit scientists have reset the Doomsday Clock to show that we have moved two minutes closer to our eternal midnight.

On the bright side, I finally finished Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale (all about evolution!) and am comforting myself with the idea that at least twice in the last billion years, life (mostly) got wiped out and rebounded....slowly. Once the giant reptiles vanished, our little nocturnal shrew-like ancestors made mammalian hay with the whole thing. What happens when we (the new giant reptiles) blow ourselves up? My money's on the cockroaches.

And speaking of giant reptiles, I've moved on to reading Eragon.

My favorite part of the MLA convention...

My friend Jonathan and me--balls, balls, balls!

Sometimes, the best thing about the day is the diner you find yourself in.

So winter quarter is less than 48 hours old. Yesterday, they closed campus because of high winds (so I had some extra time to finish reading schedules and syllabi); today, cleanup ensues--there are several downed trees and lots of trash blown about.

Today's adventure, on a personal note, was of the locking-myself-out-of-the-house genre. "No problem," I thought. "There are spares." Then I remembered that all of our spares were inside the house, since we had regathered them from housesitters and friends upon our return from Boston. Our dogsitter, the intrepid Marianne, wasn't answering her phone. "In the meantime, no problem," I told myself. "I'll just scale the fence and get the spare from the back house."

And so, with a boost from the front-porch bench (all 75 pounds of it, which I dragged to the side of the house), I got on top of our 6-foot cedar plank fence (yes, the gates were also locked), jumped down, and went out back. Dear reader, you already know this--there was no spare key there, either.

I climbed back over the fence to hang out with Morrigan, who was leashed to the front door waiting for me. Marianne appeared, let me in, and I came in to work.....after some salutary eggs and pancakes at DJ's with my friend Hossy.

at left: the view from DJ's

Fun at Blogthings

My Pirate Name Is...

Dirty Jack of the Baltic

What's Your Pirate Name?

Done, done, done!

I finished the essay ("Lesbian Spectacle and the Disruption of Desire") at 7 p.m. Pacific Time and emailed it away. The LAW has read it and pronounced it intelligible, and she approved my decision not to end the piece with "And we all know Paradise is chock-full of lesbians." Too bad.

It was good to finish it--I think I've proven to myself that the brain still works in interesting ways, although I'll have to beat the lobes back into their cold, conjoined torpor by Monday, when Winter Quarter starts.

Just what is a "chock," and with what does one fill it?

A new turn.

I'm trying to re-focus myself. Really, what I want to do is reach a level above "Dan Quayle" in my Civilization IV game, but I suspect that obsessive gaming will not help me finish the article that's due this week. An excerpt:

Again: any techne of lesbian sexuality will do well to embrace the Spectacular as a force that makes fleshly bodies temporarily readable through its sustained jumbling of representation and desire. I won’t rehearse decades of psychoanalytic and/or French feminist and/or poststructuralist thought here, but instead offer one small proposition that we might agree upon: the body—the fleshly thing that carries us around, this ugly bag of mostly water, as Gollum would have it—is never really our own, never in existence apart from representation and desire. Perhaps we can express this relationship thusly: our self at its most simply speakable or readable is comprised of ratios between the nodes of Body, Representation, and Desire, much like the classic rhetorical triangle of speaker, audience, and subject.

Now if I could just remember how to write complete sentences so I could finish the other 18.5 pages.